No need for cull

PUBLISHED: 11:26 15 March 2007 | UPDATED: 12:18 04 May 2010

EVERY year the story of Ely s famous Muscovy ducks hits the headlines. All that John Geraghty said in last week s Letters is quite true, but he forgot to use a bit of arithmetic in his calculations. He has said that the ducks live for 20 years or more; we

EVERY year the story of Ely's famous Muscovy ducks hits the headlines. All that John Geraghty said in last week's Letters is quite true, but he forgot to use a bit of arithmetic in his calculations.

He has said that the ducks live for 20 years or more; well that's as maybe, but if you go back 10 years there were 20 ducks on the river. So let's start with 20 ducks, each duck has 15 chicks, that's 300 chicks. Now multiply that by 10, that to me is 3,000, ducks and they have two batches of eggs per year, so that's now 6,000.

I would like to speak to anyone who has been to the river at Ely and counted 6,000 Muscovy ducks.

A lot of the ducks must be dying out naturally and certainly do not reach 20 years old. A lot of them are taken by foxes or other animals and even pike will take the chicks.

Rats will also take the eggs and chicks, and hedgehogs love eggs as do our water-loving snakes and the grass snakes.

This familiar story about the Muscovy ducks seems to repeat itself every year, for goodness sake let it drop. Please leave the ducks to nature, we do not need a cull.

Yes, the motorists should slow down in Ely, and that's not a bad thing, and also there's the old favourite that they make a mess on the paths.

It's easily washed away every day by the council road cleaner.

But the council should look at the yobos who spit chewing gum all over our streets in Ely. There are white patches everywhere and it sticks to your shoes, and if you stand on the pavement you get stuck there.

I say to the council , invest in some spittoons and place them around Ely.

It must cost the council a fortune to have this erased by contractors.